BOOK SYNOPSIS
Wind Dancer has loved Crooked Snake for many years, but knows better than to tell him of that love. It is not her place and he has war, not love on his mind. When he tells her that he wants her in his life, she is thrilled, but learning he has turned himself in to the white soldiers, she knows all is lost.

Crooked Snake’s trip south brings more than peace to his heart when he is reunited with the daughter he thought was killed fifteen years earlier. Knowing he cannot return to Canada and leave her behind, even captivity is better than separation. When a miracle happens he is allowed to live in peace on the reservation with his sons and anyone else from the village in Canada who wishes to follow. Will he be able to take his place on the council of elders and still be able to convince Wind Dancer to become his wife?

BOOK EXCERPTS
Canada--1885

Crooked Snake made his way toward the dwelling of Wind Dancer. As the widow of his good friend Running Horse, he visited her often during the winter months he spent with the Cheyenne in Canada.

So much had happened during the fifteen years since he returned from the hunt to find that the Blue Coats had destroyed everyone and everything he ever loved. His only remaining family were his sons Growling Bear and Tall Elk. His wife, daughter and father, Chief Hunting Hawk lay beneath the frozen ground of the Montana prairie land. All remnants of the village he had once called home were gone. All that remained were the river that ran beside the village and the forest that stood as a silent reminder of what once was.

As the son of a chief, he should have taken his father’s position, but the Great Spirit had other plans for him. At first he had waged war against all the whites, but he knew this was not the path he needed to take in retaliation for what had happened to his family. By killing women and children, to say nothing of men who wanted nothing more than to care for their families, he was no better than the Blue Coats who had taken his family from him.

Once he came to that realization, he asked the Great Spirit for forgiveness. He was not a cold-blooded killer by nature. It was wrong to do battle against innocents, as had the Blue Coats. It was then that he had turned his efforts to fighting the soldiers who kept coming onto the lands of the Cheyenne and Sioux as well as all the other tribes of the northern plains.

While Crooked Snake and Running Horse were content to spend their winters with Wind Dancer’s people in Canada, Charging Buffalo, Grey Wolf and several of the others returned to become part of other bands of Cheyenne who lived closer to the village of death.

Crooked Snake watched as his friend, Charging Buffalo became a chief, while he remained a renegade. When the Sioux prepared for war against the whites, Crooked Snake was one of the first to join forces with them. He and Running Horse had left the security of their homes in Canada to ride with their brothers to the battle that would become known as the Little Big Horn.

Many tribes had suffered at the hands of Yellow Hair, who the whites called Custer. During the battle he had killed many of the white devils, but not without losses on both sides. Grey Wolf sustained injuries that almost took his life. Without the constant care of Owl Woman he would have certainly died from them. But greater than those who had been injured were the friends he had lost to death.

He’d watched as a white soldier’s bullet took Running Horse’s life. It had been like losing a brother to see his lifeless body lying among those of the white soldiers. Instead of leaving his friend as food for the animals and birds who fed on the dead carcasses of those who had fallen, he took the body back to Wind Dancer. She had grieved, but understood that her husband had given his life for a noble cause. After all he had given her two sons and a daughter to keep her from being lonely.

Even though he hadn’t promised his friend that he would care for Wind Dancer, he took on the responsibility of providing food for her family as well as the protection she deserved.

Since the battle that took his friend’s life, he had less of a taste for blood. He still went back to the village where Charging Buffalo and Grey Wolf were every summer, but he didn’t do the raids he had done in the past. With his sons, Growling Bear and Tall Elk, he had attacked the soldiers at the fort with great regularity during the summer months when he helped keep his people supplied with meat.

AUTHOR BIO
Mild Mannered receptionist, wife, mother and grandmother by day, Sherry Derr-Wille spends her nights writing and writing and writing. Having been inspired by an English assignment in her sophomore year of high school, she had never quite finished the assignment. New stories pop into her head every day with never enough time to write them all.

A Wisconsin native, she grew up a country girl, but enjoys her “city” home. She and her husband of over 40 years, Bob, live in a mid-sized town close to the Illinois border, where she works as a receptionist for an insurance office and he is retired. Deeming Bob “A Saint” for putting up with her, she has never regretted marrying her high school sweetheart just two days after graduation in 1964.

BOOK REVIEWS
Becky's Rebel: Ms. Derr-Wille brings the spirit of understanding the plight of the Civil War survivors. Becky Larson and her Rebel, Joe Kemmerman, reminds us that love and faith overcome all obstacles. A must read for those who still need to understand there is no different in the hearts of people, North or South. Becky’s Rebel will make you laugh, shed a tear or two and have you falling in love, once again, with a time and it’s people that is uniquely America’s ... the Civil War era. -- Debbie Fritter – The Perfect Match – Whippoorwill Press

Hello Do You Know Me is a wonderful heart-warming love story. It touches your heart from the very beginning. It has everything that makes you turn the pages. Matt Bratzman has lived another man’s life for thirty-five years. Betsy Connor is a widow again. Now out of the blue her first love is back from the grave. But it can't be. Jerry Fellows was killed in Viet Nam. Sherry Derr Wille’s characters are real and you find yourself cheering for them and wanting them to find a happy-ever-after. If you like stories that grab a hold of your heart and don’t let go. You'll love this one. Along the way there is some humor and tears and love that survived through time. There were many tragedies out of the Viet Nam War but thanks to Ms. Wille this one had a happy ending.-- Judy Leigh Peters, A Father’s Hope, Joshua’s Faith, http://www.judyleighpeters.com